In today's gospel, Christ answers the apostles' questions of a hierarchy among them.
Jesus summoned the twelve and said to them,
"You know that those who are recognized as rulers over the Gentiles
lord it over them,
and their great ones make their authority over them felt.
But it shall not be so among you.
Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant;
whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all.
For the Son of Man did not come to be served
but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many."
This humility, especially among the great, is a bitter pill for many of the world. Nietzsche hated this element of Christianity; he loved the bravado and pride of the ancient Greek world. He called it "the cancer of humility" and found meaning in life in the definition and fulfillment of the individual. He hated the idea of defining oneself in service to others, of raising another with oneself. He wrote: "All things are subject to interpretation; whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth."
Pretty far from Christ who is bringing a very specific message unencumbered by the temporal. His is the relationship between man and man, man and God. If that relationship becomes the basic--beyond the limits of the temporal, the culture, the primitive confines of the Old Testament, Nietzsche becomes peripheral.
Jesus summoned the twelve and said to them,
"You know that those who are recognized as rulers over the Gentiles
lord it over them,
and their great ones make their authority over them felt.
But it shall not be so among you.
Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant;
whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all.
For the Son of Man did not come to be served
but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many."
This humility, especially among the great, is a bitter pill for many of the world. Nietzsche hated this element of Christianity; he loved the bravado and pride of the ancient Greek world. He called it "the cancer of humility" and found meaning in life in the definition and fulfillment of the individual. He hated the idea of defining oneself in service to others, of raising another with oneself. He wrote: "All things are subject to interpretation; whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth."
Pretty far from Christ who is bringing a very specific message unencumbered by the temporal. His is the relationship between man and man, man and God. If that relationship becomes the basic--beyond the limits of the temporal, the culture, the primitive confines of the Old Testament, Nietzsche becomes peripheral.
I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul’s history
Through corridors of light, where the hours are suns,
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the Spirit, clothed from head to foot in song.
And who hoarded from the Spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.
What is precious, is never to forget
The essential delight of the blood drawn from ageless springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth.
Never to deny its pleasure in the morning simple light
Nor its grave evening demand for love.
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog, the flowering of the spirit.
Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields,
See how these names are fêted by the waving grass
And by the streamers of white cloud
And whispers of wind in the listening sky.
The names of those who in their lives fought for life,
Who wore at their hearts the fire’s centre.
Born of the sun, they travelled a short while toward the sun
And left the vivid air signed with their honour.
--Stephen Spender
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